ABSTRACT
As Congress considers raising the federal minimum wage from its current level of $5.15 per hour to $6.15, it is important to understand who will benefit from this increase. An analysis of low-wage workers shows that the main beneficiaries of this one-dollar increase would be working women, almost one million of whom are single mothers. In fact, of the 11.8 million workers who would receive a pay increase as the result of this higher minimum wage, 58 percent would be women, simply because, as a group, they earn lower wages than men. As a result, a minimum wage increase would reduce the overall pay gap between women and men.
